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Inside secrets with the queen on a Scottish Highlands adventure!

Yvonne Lanelli/¡Vamanos! Columnist

Posted:
08/24/2012 11:21:21 AM MDT

Part Two: Holyrood Palace's Tragic Romance

The Royal Residence of Queen Elizabeth II in Edinburgh, Scotland, is a fitting place to conclude our Brit summer. But that's not why we're here. We'll discover secrets about one of my favorite historical persons - and the site of a murder. Even on an overcast day, Holyrood Palace doesn't look like a murder scene. Chattering tourists clamor for the best shots of fountains, turrets and each other before entering the No Photography zone inside. Turn on your audio guide and step with me inside the palace's gray stone walls.

Immense portraits of stern monarchs and nobility flank a marble staircase. We pause before one portrait, a young woman of the 16th Century, her red hair captured by circlet of pearls and wimple that framed her famed ivory skin. Her delicate beauty takes your breath away. This is Mary, Queen of Scots, aged 19 or so, one of Holyrood's most famous residents.

But first...

We leave Mary and continue up the marble stairs to the Royal Dining Room. Chandeliers and large windows light the immense cream and red velvet-draped room. The 30-guest table is set for lunch with many pieces of antique silver and a menu revealing what Princess Royal Anne served recent luncheon guests (display only since the Queen isn't in residence).

Life-size portraits dominate the dining room. A charming 20-something Queen Victoria smiles from one end; her uncle, George IV, clad in kilts, stares from the opposite.

A center portrait of a very attractive young man of the 18th Century dominates one wall.

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This is Charles Stuart, also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, the handsome, charming grandson of James II, himself a great-grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots. James II, England's and Scotland's last Catholic monarch, had been exiled to France in favor of his daughter, Mary II, and her Protestant husband, William of Orange. When Mary II died childless, she was succeeded by her sister, Queen Anne. Despite having 13 children, Anne died without an heir because no child outlived her, so the throne was offered - not to any of James' Catholic heirs, such as grandson Bonnie Charlie, but to some distant cousin from the German principality of Hanover, a guy named George. He spoke no English and had no qualification for kingship other than being the closest legitimate male relative who was Protestant.

Headquartered at Holyrood, Bonnie Prince Charlie rallied an army against the Hanoverian George II to restore Stuarts to the throne. With the support of half the country plus Ireland and France, he almost succeeded. But all ended at the Battle of Culloden. In 1746, at the last battle fought on British soil, Charlie's armies were slaughtered and Stuart hopes died forever. The Hanoverians occupied the combined thrones of Scotland and England until Queen Victoria.

You'll find much to admire in Holyrood

Elaborately carved and decorated high ceilings, exquisite Brussels tapestries, the elaborate Throne Room, displays of jewelry worn by Scottish royalty and the Great Gallery's portraits of Scottish kings since 350 AD.

In former times, the King's Bedchamber was the room in which the most important guests would be received. The present queen does not sleep here, however, and the room, its 17th Century rose satin canopy bed and carved furniture, are strictly for display.

Finally, we arrive at the oldest part of the palace, the north-west turret apartments occupied by Mary, Queen of Scots.

Here is the mystery of Holyrood

A century and a half older than the rest of the palace, these turret rooms are small and dark, lit by small windows and candlelight. Even tapestries do not alleviate the gloom, rendering a sense of oppression rather than opulence as in the newer sections - fitting setting for the tragedies that unfolded here.

Mary's husband, Lord Darnley, was by all accounts a flattering, drunken fraud who had courted the young susceptible Queen Mary because her cousin Queen Elizabeth I of England had spurned him. He expected Mary to name him king once he'd impregnated her. She didn't. Jealous of anyone she was nice to - especially her Italian secretary David Rizzio - Darnley was convinced they were sleeping together.

His apartments were directly below hers in this northwest tower. A private staircase, narrow and winding, connects the two. Tourists climb this same staircase.

We spiral up the turret, ignoring the chattering Chinese tourists in front, instead, imagining a drunken Darnley creeping up those stairs.

His equally drunken cohorts follow, hands on hilts. The heavy wooden door opens and he bursts into her bedchamber, swords drawn. It is empty. He jerks open the door to her smaller private chamber and there they are - Mary and two ladies in waiting eating supper and David, strumming his lute.

They look up in shock. Darnley grabs David. Mary, more than eight months pregnant, screams. Darnley's men drag David into Mary's outer chamber to her oratory and stab him, over and over, 56 times . . .

Nineteenth Century tourists said they could still see bloodstains on the floor. We look, but in the gloom and pressed by tourists behind, we see nothing. But we feel oppression and let the crowd jostle us out into the courtyard and into ruins of Holyrood Abbey, across to the gardens, and finally, to the bus stop.

We felt the mysterious secrets of Holyrood.

Next time: Remembering the events of 11 years ago - opening the 911 Memorial.

Join award-winning photojournalist Yvonne Lanelli (www.EVLanelli.com) for adventures around the world every two weeks exclusively in Vámonos.